I wasn’t going to post about Politics again so soon but I see Gordon Brown has been getting pelters for referring to a voter as a bigot.

Is that really the story here?

Which of us has not said one thing to somebody for the sake of being polite and yet revealed a contrary opinion when in private?

For this is the crux. Gordon Brown’s “gaffe” was uttered in private. It was not for public consumption. The fact he was miked up at the time does not negate that.

So who is in the wrong here?

I would say that it was those journalists who were eavesdropping on his private conversations and did not immediately switch off their receivers nor forget what they’d heard.

Let us not forget that the man is – for the moment – Prime Minister. The journalists had no right to listen in to his private conversations. If they had such a right we might as well forget all about the thirty year (or is it twenty year now?) rule and wire the Cabinet Office for sound right now and be let in on those deliberations.

That the journalists did listen in is contemptible. To then reveal the content is politics of the lowest variety.

And for what it’s worth Gordon Brown was right. The woman was – is – a bigot; at least in what I heard her say to him.

No British voter elects a Prime Minister. Neither do we elect a government.

All we vote for – all we ever vote for – in UK General Elections is a representative, a single member of Parliament.

I have voted in nine General Elections and have yet to find a question on the ballot paper asking me who(m) do I wish to be Prime Minister – or indeed whom I wish to be in government.

The only person who can be said to “vote” for the Prime Minister is the monarch – at present the Queen – who invites an MP to form a government (albeit usually on advice from the outgoing PM.) This is true whether that invited MP can “command” a majority in the House of Commons or not. It is Parliament (a word, by the way, derived from French and meaning, almost literally, talking shop) which decides whether a government exists or not; as only the House of Commons can vote a government down.

In this regard I find the complaints that Gordon Brown was an unelected PM to be strange, even ignorant – if not deliberately mischievous. He was as elected – or unelected – as Tony Blair, John Major, Margaret Thatcher, James Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Alec Douglas Home, Harold MacMillan etc. etc. before him.

Every Member of Parliament has been elected, except, in days past, for the Speaker, whom convention required to be unopposed – and he or she could not become PM. UKIP and others are, I believe standing against John Bercow on May 6^th. Michael Martin had some opposition too last time as I recall.

In the 2005 General Election Gordon Brown’s name certainly appeared on my ballot paper. To call him unelected was a distortion of the truth, at best. It subsumes into the term only those closed electorates which may choose a political party’s leader. Not being a member of any of them I was not consulted when those parties made their respective choices so in that respect, but in that respect alone, they were/are all unelected. As has been every Prime Minister in my – and anybody else’s – lifetime.

Still, if Mr Irresponsible or even that inoffensive Mr Clegg become PM after next Thursday I may take some delight in dubbing them unelected.

I caught the preamble to Call Me Dave’s launch of the Conservatives’ manifesto today. Over the PA they were playing all sorts of songs with “change,” “changes” or “better” in their lyrics – except of course D:Ream.

Did the Tories have permission to do this?

One of the songs was Bowie’s Changes, which contains the line “Don’t want to be a richer man.”

I don’t suppose Dave does: he comes from money and took good care to marry even more.

The song also has, “You’ve left us up to our necks in it.” Was this a prediction, Dave?

Look out you rock ‘n’ rollers.

There aren’t many things that can make me sympathetic to the Scottish Labour Party…..

But the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in one of its periodic fits of pique is certainly up there.

Apparently Cardinal Keith O’Brien has accused the government of undermining religious freedom. (That would be the UK government, though. The Cardinal seems to have forgotten the SNP is in power in Scotland now.)

Well now; the last time I heard, people of all faiths (and none) in Scotland and indeed the whole UK were free to go about their business as long as it was within the law.

I don’t see any evidence of persecution nor of churches being forcibly closed down by the forces of the state. The Cardinal has had no difficulty in putting his point across* and has been widely quoted. So where is this infringement of freedom?

The churches have as much, and therefore as little, right as anyone else to have an input or a view on political matters. What they don’t have, and, despite the Cardinal’s and Secretary Of State Jim Murphy’s, strictures, ought not to have, is a superior right, which I fear is what the Cardinal is advocating. He seems to want freedom for his views but not for others’.

*Edited to add: He was given yet more air time on today’s Reporting Scotland.

The Digital Economy Bill seems to be the latest step in the UK Government’s apparently ongoing project to restrict and undermine the civil liberties of its citizens.

The bill contains provisions to remove internet access from alleged illegal file sharers even if they have not been convicted of any such offence. This strikes at one of the most fundamental underpinnings of the justice system.

Charles Stross puts the argument against the bill here.

There is also a petition you can sign up to – if you’re a UK citizen (sorry, subject) – on the No. 10 Downing Street web site.

With the release of a tape of a telephone conversation between Jacqui (sic) Janes and Gordon Brown it has become blindingly obvious that the hoo-hah surrounding his letter of condolence has been entirely confected; part of a sting operation against the Prime Minister almost certainly constructed for narrow (party) political purposes.

I do not buy for a single moment the notion that this is all about one woman’s grief or indeed supporting the troops in Afghanistan. It is solely about providing a bad press for the Prme Minister.

Not the least of the disturbing aspects of this affair is the revelation of the contents of the telephone call. Was Gordon Brown informed he was being taped? If not; is it not an offence to record someone over the phone without informing them that it is being done? This makes Ms Janes a law breaker and the Sun an accessory at the very least. (May we look forward to a prosecution?)

Moreover, due to these dubious circumstances – after all, which citizen, without ulterior motive or inducement, has the necessary recording equipment readily at hand, just in case? – I am inevitably led to the suspicion that Ms Janes may be rewarded financially for such deceit. [For the record: this is a suspicion that I would be delighted to be proven unfounded.]

However, I now have no sympathy whatever for Ms Janes.

Quite apart from Gordon Brown’s poor vision – which may make writing difficult for him and hence, also, his script difficult to read (and many people, myself included, have appalling handwriting) – how can Ms Janes object to his spelling when she, or her parents, cannot even spell her own name? The traditional form is Jackie, not Jacqui.

She not only spurned his initial letter – which he did not have to write; when, for whatever reason, he made another gesture of condolence by telephoning her, she was ungracious enough to reject this too.

It sounds very much like she is flailing around desperately trying to blame anyone for her son’s death.

Now (this is not to disparage the Armed Forces and it is especially galling to be writing this on Armistice Day) but Britain does not have a conscript army. Her son had to volunteer. Squaddies know the risks when they enlist. And unfortunately, if necessary, the duty they sign up for is to die. So to put it brutally, the only person to blame for his death is himself.

But perhaps she feels she could have stopped her son joining up and wishes now that she had, and so herself feels guilty for not doing so.

Whatever the truth of all this, the Sun’s complicity in her actions is despicable. She should have been left by them to grieve in peace; not driven to higher heights of denial and torment.

If the Sun’s intention was to make people less likely to have sympathy for the Prime Minister then in my case it has backfired spectacularly. It’s almost enough to make me consider voting for Gordon Brown. (And, unlike most people, I am actually in a position to do so.)

The man has done the decent thing twice over; and been pilloried for it.

He would have been damned if he hadn’t and he was damned that he did.

So, how likely is he in the future to write letters to the relatives of dead soldiers?

Wisely, David Cameron steered clear of this at PMQs today.

Jacqui Janes, mother of a British soldier killed in Afghanistan, has been in the news because a letter she received from Gordon Brown apparently misspelled her dead son’s name and, she is quoted as saying, was, “hastily scrawled,” forbye.

Just one thought. Who does she think she is?

She received a letter of condolence from the Prime Minister. Hand written, no less.

I appreciate that in her grief she may not have been in an accommodating frame of mind. But…..

The letter wasn’t delegated to a minion. It wasn’t typed or word processed.

Does she imagine for a moment that Lloyd George or Winston Churchill personally wrote a letter of condolence to every member of the armed forces killed on their watches? I very much doubt Margaret Thatcher did so for each soldier, sailor or airman killed in the Falklands.

So who exactly is disrespecting whom? Whatever anyone thinks of Gordon Brown as PM the man is in an exacting job with many demands on his time.

If I had received such a letter I’d be grateful that he’d taken time from his schedule to even think to do so. The mere fact he wrote it shows he was thinking about her loss.

Btw: If I had a penny for every time my name had been misspelled – or mispronounced – I would be a very rich man indeed. I’m sure the same could be said for Ms Janes.

I almost feel like enjoining her to grow up.

It is desperately sad that her personal tragedy has been diminished by a sordid descent into PM bashing.

As it is, I cannot escape the notion that she has been used. And that is the real disgrace. A gross disrespect to her son by those who used her, much more so than a mere misspelling of his name.

See my previous rants about politicians and poppies here and here.

Well. This year Jack Straw sported one in the House of Commons on the 20^th October!

That’s ridiculous. It’s at least 20 days before Remembrance Sunday (or 27 if it’s the Sunday after the 11th November.)

Doesn’t the Queen get to pick which Sunday it will be if the 11th is on a Wednesday?

Edited to add. I spotted Gordon Brown with one at Prime Minister’s Questions on the 21^st (yesterday) yet on the lunchtime news yesterday it said Dame Vera Lynn was to launch this year’s poppy appeal.

How come politicians get there first?

Re-edited: The Conservative spokeswoman on last night’s Question Time on BBC 1 had on a quite ridiculous effort: not the standard issue at all. It was as if she was saying my poppy’s bigger than your poppy and so I’m better than you. (Or more patriotic; or something.) It was actually more like the special ones the Queen wears. I’d have been more impressed if she’d had on a normal one like the general public buys – no green leaf. That would have been enough of a contrast with the other panellists.

My point about right wing Republicans not accepting Democrats as legitimate Presidents while the same is not true of Democrats vis-à-vis Republican Presidents has been underlined by Michael Tomasky in Monday’s Guardian.

There is just no end to the lunacy of some people.

England has no Parliament.

It hasn’t had since the Act of Union was given the Royal assent over 300 years ago.

Yet a lot of people – including English and Scots MPs alike – labour under the misconception that it has, that the Westminster Parliament is its direct successor and that the English Parliament subsumed that of the Scots. The reality is that both ended at the same time and were succeeded by the present Westminster body, the Parliament of the UK.

Any rumblings of unrest among some (English) MPs about Scottish representation at Westminster arise in part, I’m sure, out of this misunderstanding – if it’s not just deliberate mischief making.

Yes, there is now an imbalance in that English MPs have no say over devolved matters. Note, however, that no Scottish, nor Welsh, nor Northern Irish MPs at Westminster are in a different position in this regard. All are MPs of the UK Parliament and all are as unable to vote on devolved matters as any English MP (except insofar as they may be a constituent in Scotland, Wales or N. Ireland – when their influence is as minimal as mine – unless they happen to be a dual member.)

But this imbalance is only a corollary to that which prevailed before devolution, when English votes could override any combination of Welsh, Irish and Scots.

But that is actually still the case, the more so since the number of Scots MPs was reduced after devolution. If every English MP so decided they could easily all vote one way on any particular issue and to hell with the Celtic fringe.

However, that would be to deny that there is a union and that the constituent parts of the Union ought – while the union exists – to be aware of the interests of all the other parts. It was precisely for this reason that Scotland’s number of MPs was, before devolution, much higher than it ought to be on a strict head count.

In this regard, the US system whereby the lower House (of Representatives) is elected on a by-head basis and the upper House (the Senate) where each state – no matter how big or small – has two senators each, is just such an attempt to reconcile the rights of parts of the federation with the whole. (The position of the District of Columbia is an anomaly.) Whether it succeeds or not is another matter.

That’s the point. Every system is imperfect. Short of a federalised UK where the representation of each of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland was more or less equal (and how likely is that to come about?) or similar devolved powers being given to England (and Wales and NI) as now exist for Scotland – which would mean the UK Parliament needed a large reduction in size (a consummation some quarters would no doubt fervently desire but for which MPs are not going to be turkeys voting for Christmas) – we won’t be getting one.

For the moment (or, do you think, until a Tory UK administration conspires with the SNP to remove Scotland from Westminster completely and therefore embeds its English hegemony in the rump UK Parliament that would be left?) we’re stuck with the situation as it is.

And that means the answer to the West Lothian Question?

Is, “So what?”